There is a fit & happier person inside everyone

Monthly Archives: June 2014

My Small Step Philosophy: A fit life is attained by making small, realistic and sustainable changes in food consumption and exercise over time. This allows a person time to create and hone new, fit habits that then become adopted and integrated into her everyday life. The result is a person who is living a fit lifestyle each and every day, making her healthy and strong for a lifetime. I have used this philosophy to create my One Small Step blog series. Each month, I give you one healthy change to work on for that entire month. Sometimes it’s a diet change, sometimes an exercise change and sometimes one of each. The idea is to concentrate only on that one change for a month so that it becomes ingrained into your daily meals or weekly exercise routines, making you able to take on another small change at the beginning of the next month. Just discovering the series now? No worries, the Small Step changes don’t need to be done in any particular order and are independent of one another. You can begin this month, follow along the rest of the year and incorporate what you’ve missed next year.

July’s Small Step advice is relevant no matter where you are in your fitness journey. This time of year can be the most difficult to stay on track with exercise and diet goals because routine is a friend and disruption is the enemy. The oppressive weather, vacations, kids at home and outdoor parties brimming with food and drink can distract, tempt and derail the most avid exercisers and healthy eaters. Now is the time to reflect on what is and isn’t working for you, revamp your goals to get you through the summer, and renew your commitment to a fitter you so that you’re off and running when September brings normalcy back into your life.

Reflect

If something hasn’t been enjoyable, do-able or working quite right for you lately, it’s doomed to fail during the summer months. Better to readjust your expectations and goals before you give up so you can give yourself a fighting chance to succeed. If you aren’t already keeping an exercise and food journal, now is a good time to start. It can be treated solely as a log, listing the exercise done and food eaten on a daily basis. Studies have shown that journals help keep dieters and novice exercisers on track. It forces you to stay accountable to yourself. If you know that you’re going to be writing it down, you’re less likely to raid the fridge at 10pm or skip an exercise class. However, I recommend going beyond a log and make it more of a journal. Record thoughts, emotions and reflections along with logging activity and diet. You can use this to identify positive and negative triggers to your fitness behavior so you can maximize the positive triggers and minimize the negative. The more detail you put in your journal, the more relevant and valuable the information is when setting goals, scheduling exercise and planning meals. This approach turns what can be the drudgery of keeping a log into more of a diary that has a positive vibe, making the process more personal. It also creates a historical record of your fitness journey. Imagine how inspiring it would be for you to flip back to one of your own personal success stories and relive it, particularly at a time when you might be experiencing a set back.

Revamp

Use the knowledge you’ve gained from your reflections to set some short-term exercise and diet goals to get you through the summer. Some things are more difficult to achieve in the summer. For example, it can be tricky if the bulk of your cardio is done outdoors. The heat and humidity can be a real and valid deterrent. We all need to plan for that and either do less intense outdoor workouts during those times or find indoor or water-based alternatives. Other goals are more easily achieved this time of year, such as eating more fresh, local fruits and vegetables. To avoid other common summer pitfalls, come up with game plans for including your children in your healthy habits, what and how much you will consume at the neighborhood block party and what you will do for exercise and diet while on vacation. Planning ahead isn’t difficult but it can be the difference between success and failure.

Once you have your summer plan in place, use the next two months of journaling and reflection to set a course of goals beginning in the fall. Maybe they will be similar to what they are now or maybe they’ll be entirely different. In either case, they need to be realistic, manageable and enjoyable. The more thorough you are in your reflections, the more likely they are to meet those three criteria and, therefore, the more achievable the goals will be for you. (See my SMART goal setting tips here.)

Renew

Just as vacation is a chance to break out of the mundane, recharge and renew, so should this time be for your fitness routine. Appreciate how enjoyable it is to move your body, make it stronger and savor really good, healthy food. Sample new things, rediscover old things, reflect on both, revamp your goals and renew your commitment to fitness.

This summer’s One Small Step is less of a step than, actually, a pause. The step by step approach is good and it works. But sometimes it’s valuable to stop a moment, look at the big picture and re-evaluate before taking the next step. This step is all about taking advantage of the laid back mood of summer by checking in with the mind and soul to make sure they are on board with the body on the journey to fitness.

If you’ve been following my blog, you know I recently completed a weight-loss plan and reached my goal. While the process of losing weight is difficult, it is a short-term goal with an end point. I knew I wouldn’t feel as hungry or deprived once the calorie restriction ceased. Psychologically speaking, it was a powerful motivational tool I had at my disposal to get through the toughest days and weeks.

But, maintaining a healthy weight is a long-term goal. In fact, it’s a life-long goal with no end point. I’m now a month and a half into my weight-maintenance plan to keep my weight exactly where it is. Yes, this plan is clearly in it’s infancy and only time will tell if I’m successful. But the plan, by design, will work. I am the variable that matters. If I stick to the plan, I will be successful. If I don’t, anything can happen. I shared with you the plan I utilized to lose the weight, today’s post gives you insight into my weight-maintenance plan.

First, there needs to be some thought given to how the weight-loss is achieved in the first place. If the weight-loss plan involves cutting out entire foods, food groups or massive caloric restriction, you may reach your goal. But, maintenance after that kind of diet will be nearly impossible to achieve. The adage “diets don’t work” is only half true. Any diet will work simply because all weight-loss diet plans restrict calories in some way. If one follows the plan, one will lose weight. The reason most diets don’t work is usually one of two things happens: either the person goes off the diet before reaching her goal or she goes off the diet once reaching her goal and, eventually, she puts the weight back on. The more restrictive the diet, the more likely it won’t be sustained and the quicker the weight returns. This is why I vehemently oppose highly restrictive diets for weight-loss. I don’t believe they’re healthy and I don’t believe they work in the long run. Low-carb, very low-fat, vegan, gluten-free, vegetarian, no sugar, no white foods, paleo – may fit the bill for people who are making lifestyle or ethical choices with their diets and some of these diets are essential for people with certain diseases, food allergies and intolerances. But they aren’t good weight-loss diets for the average person who would otherwise happily consume these foods if given the option.

The simpler you keep your weight-loss plan, the easier it will be to maintain your weight beyond the plan. There were no foods that were off-limits for me. To be fair, I was already eating a mostly healthy diet – lean proteins, high quality fats, plenty of fruits and vegetables, minimally processed whole grains. But I also allow myself treats like dark chocolate, ice cream, beer, wine, French fries and home-baked items. And, though I try to minimize highly-processed foods, a peek through my cabinets will reveal items such as crackers and energy bars. Still, these foods comprise less than 20% of my diet. Knowing my diet was already 80-90% healthy foods, my plan was all about calories in versus calories out. I kept careful track of what I ate and what I did for exercise through MyFitnessPal so that I could ensure I was running a daily calorie deficit at a rate that would yield an average weight-loss of one pound per week. This meant most days I wouldn’t have any of my above-mentioned treats. But, when I wanted to, I indulged and made up for those calories somewhere else in my day. In short, I was eating exactly the same foods I was before I dieted, I simply ate less of them.

Fast-forward to weight maintenance. The day after I reached my goal, I went into my MyFitnessPal account and changed my goal from weight loss to weight maintenance. The program used all the parameters in my account to calculate the amount of calories I can consume each day to maintain my current weight. For two weeks, I continued to log my daily food intake and exercise so I could learn how much I can eat to maintain my well-earned goal. Now, I use that information to self-monitor food intake and I weigh myself about every-other-day. So far, I’ve been able to maintain the weight. The plan for when I weigh in at more than my current weight: I return to using MyFitnessPal to cut back on calories until I’m back to the goal.

I know I had several advantages: I was already eating healthfully, exercising 6 days a week and I only had 10 pounds to lose. If I were to counsel a sedentary person with an unhealthy diet and a big weight-loss goal ahead of her, I would recommend one hurdle at a time, starting with the shortest hurdle. Begin by changing your diet, swapping out unhealthy choices for healthy ones. When you’re at the point where your food choices are 75% (or more) healthy, then you can begin exploring exercise options, the second hurdle. Once you’re already making healthy food and exercise choices in your life, then it makes sense to start focusing on calorie deficits, such as the plan I used. Most people put the hurdles in the opposite order, focusing on a restrictive diet first. By the time you get to trying to incorporate exercise, you’re too hungry and discouraged to do it! The result is unsustainable weight loss (if any) with zero health benefits.

If you put the hurdles in the right order by focusing on getting healthy first through quality food choices and exercise, you will begin to lose weight. Then, as you focus on a more targeted weight-loss plan, you can do it without feeling the need to adopt drastic, unproductive, unhealthy, restrictive food diets. This makes the last, life-long hurdle of maintaining your weight a breeze to clear.

What does a blogger do when Wi-Fi is down & 4 people in your household are jockeying for the one Ethernet wire on premises? Answer: reblog a previous post. This post is one of my most popular ever & it happens to be a timely re-post. With the official first day of summer less than a week away, it’s a good time to review the myths, safety precautions and basic dos/don’ts of exercising in the heat of summer….

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The warm weather is upon us and people are eager to do laps in outdoor pools and long swims unencumbered by lane markers in fresh and salt water. Consider incorporating this strength and stretch workout in between your swims to help improve your speed, form and stamina and stave off overuse injuries.

Activity-Specific Workout of the Month Defined: A 30 minute strength and stretch training workout tailored to benefit those who engage in a particular recreational sport or activity. The workouts will be challenging and safe for the novice but will also offer progressions for the experienced. If your children participate in these activities, know that strength and flexibility training is not only safe for kids but beneficial as well. The workouts will have minimal equipment requirements so they can be done anywhere. The goal is to properly strengthen and stretch the key muscle groups involved in the activity so the participant can achieve performance improvements and reduce the risk of injury. Click on the exercise to link to examples and step-by-step descriptions provided by www.acefitness.org.

Strength and Flexibility Training Workout for Swimming

Concept: The power in swimming comes from the legs. Therefore, primary strength targets are the largest muscles in the legs: quads, hamstrings and glutes. Primary strength targets for your upper body are dependent upon your preferred stroke: shoulder/deltoids for freestyle; upper back/traps & rhomboids for butterfly and backstroke; and chest/pecs for breaststroke. I’ve included strengthening moves for all upper body muscle groups so the workout would be relevant for any swim stroke. Good form and powerful kicks and strokes aren’t possible without a strong core, so core strengthening is also included. The flexibility training portion concentrates on the shoulders, chest, back and hips. Progressions are intended to be increasingly challenging so you can continue to build strength throughout the season. Be sure you can master the base exercise and each subsequent progression with excellent form before advancing to the next progression. Perform this workout 1-3 times per week, allowing a minimum of 48 hours rest between workout sessions, starting several weeks before and continuing throughout the season:

Warm-Up: 2-5 minutes of high knee marching, swinging opposing arms to shoulder height as you lift knees to hip height.

Strength Workout: Perform the following exercise circuit in succession with no rest between exercises:

Squats: 10-20 repetitions. Works quads, hip flexors, glutes, hamstrings. Progression: *add weight by holding free weights, medicine ball or containers filled with water while performing. Start with lighter weights, 1-5 lbs, until you can easily perform 20+ squats in a set before progressing to heavier weights.

After performing each exercise once, rest for 1-2 minutes and repeat the circuit (downward dog through bird-dog) for a second set of each exercise. After performing the circuit twice, perform the flexibility workout.

Flexibility Workout: Hold each stretch for 20-30 seconds:

Triceps-Rotator Cuff Combo: stretches upper arm on one side while stretching the rotator cuff muscles on the opposite side. Begin with an Overhead Triceps Stretch with the right arm; with the left arm, bend at the elbow, reach behind your back, place back of left hand against back and slide up to reach and clasp the fingers of both hands together. [Modification: if you’re unable to clasp hands together, use a strap or belt to bridge the gap between the hands.] Repeat on opposite side.

Side-Lying Quad Stretch: Stretches hip flexors & quads. This stretch may also be done while standing (runner’s stretch); grasp top of foot with hand to point toes toward ceiling to stretch the shins as well.

The keys to safe and effective strength training are the same regardless of gender or age – proper warm-up, form, breathing, load, progressions and stretching. The cues for these exercises provided by ACE Fitness (via my links) are excellent and, if followed, anyone can perform this workout safely, even a novice. It’s important to focus on your own body’s feedback and listen to the cues your body is providing you. Adults are much better at reading those cues than children. For this reason, if any of these exercises are new to your child, I recommend having a professional (such as your child’s coach, gym teacher or sports trainer) review the proper form for each of these exercises with your student athlete.

Before you go for your next swim, take the plunge and give this targeted strength and stretch workout a try. Then dive in and see how far your newly strengthened legs and shoulders will take you.

My Small Step Philosophy: A fit life is attained by making small, realistic and sustainable changes in food consumption and exercise over time. This allows a person time to create and hone new, fit habits that then become adopted and integrated into her everyday life. The result is a person who is living a fit lifestyle each and every day, making her healthy and strong for a lifetime. I have used this philosophy to create my One Small Step blog series. Each month, I give you one healthy change to work on for that entire month. Sometimes it’s a diet change, sometimes an exercise change and sometimes one of each. The idea is to concentrate only on that one change for a month so that it becomes ingrained into your daily meals or weekly exercise routines, making you able to take on another small change at the beginning of the next month. Just discovering the series now? No worries, the Small Step changes don’t need to be done in any particular order and are independent of one another. You can begin this month, follow along the rest of the year and incorporate what you’ve missed next year.

Are you ready for the truth? For most women, the closer she gets to middle age and menopause, the more difficult it is to lose weight or maintain a healthy weight and keep her percentage of body fat from increasing unless she strength trains regularly. You cannot run, Zumba, kick box, spin or Weight Watchers yourself out of it. It is a physiological and evolutionary fact. If you are among the few females who have super metabolism despite not having the muscle mass and accompanying testosterone of a male, thank your lucky stars and your genes because you may be able to avoid the increase on the scale. But that doesn’t protect you from losing lean mass and, as a result, increasing the ratio of fat to lean mass. Increasing fat mass, even without an increase in body weight, is unhealthy because it increases one’s risk of cardiovascular disease, hypertension, high LDL (“bad”) cholesterol, low HDL (“good”) cholesterol and osteoporosis. Guys aren’t immune. A similar, albeit less drastic, phenomenon occurs in men as they approach middle age as well.

Therefore, June’s exercise One Small Step is adding one (+1) strength training workout to your week. There’s no need to have access to a gym or buy equipment. Anyone can get a quality, full-body strength workout using nothing but good form and one’s own body weight as resistance. The advantages of body weight exercises are that most work several muscles at once and often incorporate movements we use in our everyday lives, making these functional forms of training and superior to weight machines at a gym. ACE Fitness has step-by-step instructions for nearly 100 full-body strength and stretch exercises that can be done anywhere with no equipment or large amounts of space needed. There are exercises for everyone from novices to athletes and many offer progressions that one can incorporate as she masters the basic exercise and is ready to move onto more challenging moves. The full list can be found here.

Select 6-8 exercises appropriate to your level. In order to get a well-balanced workout, be sure to select a combination of upper body, core and lower body exercises. Do a 1-2 minute warm-up, such as marching in place, to heat up the muscles before beginning. Do two sets of 10-20 repetitions of each exercise. After completing your strength training, select stretches from the same link, being sure to stretch all the muscle groups you strengthened. This entire workout should take only 20-30 minutes. A strength training workout like this done just one day per week is enough to combat the lean mass loss through aging and help boost metabolism. But you can get quicker results by doing this workout 2-3 days per week. It is important, however, to get 48 hours of rest between full-body strength training workouts.

Many women find strength training tedious and boring. I love the days I do cardio but, I have to admit, my strength training days are a challenge from a motivational standpoint sometimes. There are several strategies you can use to combat this. If you already belong to a fitness club, select at least one class per week that incorporates full-body strength training. Look for classes with the words pump or sculpt in the title or take a mat Pilates or TRX class. Or you could hire a personal trainer. I have clients who come to me to do their strength training because they know they won’t strength train on their own without external accountability. If these aren’t options for you, try doing my above workout in your backyard or while watching television or listening to your favorite music/podcast. Don’t do the same 6-8 exercises every time; cycling through many different exercises keep the workouts fresh. If you need external motivation, some fitness apps have strength training workout coaches that guide and motivate you through. Enlist a family member or friend to train with – social components to working out have been proven to keep people motivated and on track. There are also great strength training DVDs or online videos. My favorites are the Exhale MindBodySpa Core Fusion DVDs.

+1 Diet

I realize this month’s exercise Small Step is a big challenge and represents a pretty large “small step” for many. So, the diet small step this month is easy. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recommends adults get 3 to 4 cups of fruits and vegetables per day. Most Americans fall short of that amount. This month, add one (+1) serving of fruit or vegetable to your daily diet. This is different from what you’ve been doing with the Food Substitutions recommendation from April’s Small Steps post. In that case, you were reducing some or all of your protein or grain in each meal/snack and replacing it with fruit or vegetable. In this case, you want to add one more serving of fruit or vegetable, a serving you’re not already consuming regularly, somewhere in your day.